The present invention relates to a sorting apparatus for sorting sheet materials, such as photographic prints or copies, by specified group.
Various kinds of sorting apparatus are used to sort photographic prints by specific group, such as order number. Such a sorting apparatus includes a chute, disposed below a photographic printer outlet, for receiving a set of prints having the same order number. The chute feeds prints, set by set, into box-shaped racks arranged on an endless belt at regular spacings, to sort a large number of prints by order number. Such a sorting apparatus is known from Japanese Unexamined Utility Model Publication No. 63(1988)-26,662, for example.
To feed an entire set of prints received in the chute into the box-shaped rack at once, the set of prints should be thinner than the depth of the box-shaped rack. For this reason, it is necessary to provide a guide for depressing the set of prints as much as possible upon feeding them into the box-shaped rack. Such structure makes the sorting apparatus quite complex.